I’m fairly new to this website. Appreciate the work, Tony!I’d like to better understand the data set you use. I’ve been to the NOAA website and tried to wade through their explanation about HCN data and adjustments. Would you consider publishing a primer for how one starts with the NOAA website, the specific data set to download, and how one ends up with the data you use for your graphs?Thanks.I need to be willing to go (belief-wise) in whatever direction the data takes me. My problem is that I don’t know what data to trust.

Thank you.So the data used in your plots is the raw (unadjusted) temperatures?Has anyone from NOAA offered an official explanation for their temperature adjustment methodology that could even plausibly explain why the adjustments alone account for all of the warming? If they want to be taken seriously, that would seem to be imperative.

You probably know this, but for anyone new to the subject, the reason why data from the US Historical Climatology Network Stations is so often used here is that it is the “cream of the crop” as far as recording stations go. The USHCN is comprised of station which have essentially complete records, are located at sites that actually meet station guidelines (you would be amazed at how few stations meet even minimum requirements), and have been in operation for roughly a hundred years or so. Additionally, they are scattered about the US in such a way than no regions are over or under represented. In other words, these station generate the most accurate reflection of what the US climate has been and is now doing. In theory, they should need very little adjustments — not that that sort of thing ever stopped NOAA from changing the record…

By the way, if you have not already done so, check out all the linked topics that Tony has listed immediately under the picture of Toto at the top of the web page. I guarantee that you will experience multiple instances of jaw dropping and uncontroled outbursts of “Those sorry B@#$!” aimed at the CAGW crowd.

Thank you, Jason.I have read some of the posts linked at the top.I am still somewhat incredulous that there isn’t a robust public discussion about this. If the monkeying – excuse me, “adjustment” – of the data produces all of the observed warming, that would require quite a series of extraordinary coincidences to produce it, if it is in fact real.

I didn’t say that very well.If the warming is actually present, and yet it requires a monotonically increasing adjustment of the data to show it, that would mean there are an extraordinary set of circumstances at work in the opposite direction.

Hey DCA, yes, what an amazing coincidence! Monotonic increasing adjustments! Apparently, back fifty or a hundred years ago, the many stations at the time averaged a reading of an extra degree too hot, all over the country. Then, in the decades following they got incrementally better and better until a decade or two ago they were (on average) spot on. Sadly, the trend now continues and today, all the stations average reading temperature too LOW, so that they need to be tweeked higher.

Or the CAGW crowd is simply lying. And of course the authorities never give enough reasons or calculations to allow an independent observer to verify their adjustments. More than a few people have asked for justification. I remember some years back when another attempt to get clarification was made. NOAA simply responded that their “algorithms were working as designed”. I know which way Occam’s Razor would cut.